Wednesday, November 01, 2017

Thank You & Auf Wiedersehen!


Nach 6,5 Jahren habe ich bei Airbnb gekündigt. Hier ist meine Abschiedsemail an die Kollegen:

Hi friends,

I am writing to say THANK YOU for joining me on this incredible journey for the last 6.5 years as today will be my last day at Airbnb. Allow me to share a few memories with you.

Once upon a time in June 2011, I quit my first job after business school with the intention to start my own company. However, my friend Flo insisted I met with the Accoleo team, which just got acquired by Airbnb, a startup from San Francisco that wanted to scale its European business and compete with the infamous Samwer brothers’ clone Wimdu. And so we did! Fun facts: Little Benno was an intern at Accoleo and he and the one and only Jenny did in fact start working for Airbnb a few days before I did.

I spent the following months fighting on behalf of our hosts to change the local housing law to allow home sharing in Germany`s second biggest city, Hamburg, and snuck onto the very small but mighty Team Justice led by our inspiring female leader Belinda. Hopeful, I moved to Berlin to bring this sensible legislation to our capital and also volunteered to kick off our policy efforts in Greece. Fun fact: I had to convince my manager that the Greek people would be more welcoming towards me than Angela Merkel...

After winning the Greencard in the lottery (my fun fact), I moved to New York City to work on a mobilization campaign convincing New Yorkers that home sharing was good for them while we were relaunching our brand from the fluffy blue logo to Bélo. Fun fact: There were rumors of changing our name, too.

I handed the back then impossible tasks over to more competent folks like Bobby Fischer and M16 and moved further West to our mothership where I was welcomed by colleagues who patiently explained the American healthcare system or the importance of a good credit history to me. These learnings informed my relocation blog Kaliforniakati and led to the founding of the Airfinity Group Foreignairs - Airbnb`s immigrant employee resource group and resistance.

About a year ago, I knew that I had one Airbnb adventure left in me, so I decided to join the force for good Aoife and the incredible rockstar Trips team. If you still have not booked an Experience, yet, you have been missing out - book my favorite one right now! Trips is fulfilling our promise of human and authentic travel to guests and is empowering our hosts economically while pursuing their passions. Fun fact: My partner in crime Sarah and I found ourselves being driven around in a golf cart by a Trump voter through a multi-storey car park looking for our lost rental car at 11 PM before the launch of Trips...

Now, the time has come for me to move on as an entrepreneur - likely in the (gluten free) food industry. Don`t worry, I am not moving back to Deutschland.

THANK YOU, Brian, Nate & Joe for taking me on this journey with you and THANK YOU to everyone of you for teaching me so many things and being my friends and family during my relocations, the Paris attacks and these luckily mostly truly amazing years.

Don`t forget: Always Be a Host and please, be in touch!

Love, Kati

1 comment:

ellysmith said...
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